


Catch a Falling Star

by eponymous_rose



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: 1000-3000 words, Canon - TV, Canon Compliant, Character of Color, Drama, Episode Related, Friendship, Gen, Humor, POV Third Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 23:44:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eponymous_rose/pseuds/eponymous_rose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once, when she was sixteen, she caught a piece of a falling star in her hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Catch a Falling Star

"Whole worlds out there," says Mickey Smith, and points to the brightest light in the night sky. Rose's hands are moving in her excitement, now cool on his bare arms, now tugging on the collar of his T-shirt, and they laugh, both of them drunk on the night air, and the height of the fire escape, and the throbbing music inside, and being sixteen and alone, together.

The couple of pints they'd each had at Jimmy Stone's party probably hadn't hurt, either.

"I think it's an airplane," she says at last, and her hands settle at her sides. She sounds disappointed, and he almost promises the moon and stars to her again before his mind stumbles groggily back to the sight of Jimmy's hands on her shoulders, possessive, demanding. Mickey had come with a couple of mates, to hear Jimmy's band and to get a bit plastered.

He'd stayed to make sure she got home all right.

"That's no airplane," he says, and she giggles at his solemnity. "No, I'm serious! It's a spaceship or something."

"Get off!" She shoves him, and they both laugh when she nearly topples over with the attempt. "Little green men and all."

"Yeah, well, long as they don't abduct us." Mickey leans in and sniffs her breath - alcohol, yeah, but something sweeter underneath, something old and familiar. He backs away a bit too quickly. "Probably not the greatest representatives of humanity."

"I wouldn't go that far," she says, and her grin turns a bit ironic, a mirror of Jimmy's default, too-flash-to-be-bothered expression. The girl Mickey had kissed outside her front door two years back wouldn't have known how to smile like that. "It's the whole world in a nutshell, you and me, out here. Bit boring, bit maudlin, utterly useless in the end."

"We're not," he says, and she looks at him, and their hands are very still. "We're so not, though. You know that, Rose."

She touches his cheek with an unfamiliar grace, and he knows for a jealous moment who taught her to touch like that, and then her fingertips brush his lips. "You're right," she says, but her eyes are sad, distant. "We're so not."

She turns back to the light and the noise and the party, leaving him on the fire escape with a light that could be a star or an airplane or a spaceship, and, before he can find out which it is, he follows her inside.

*~*~*

He still touches her hand sometimes; muscle memory, or some more profound need for something from the old universe. Every now and then she touches back, but most of the time they're separate, distant, and the weight of the Void hangs heavy between them.

They're on a park bench, eating pizza that still doesn't taste quite right - they do something with the sauce, here. First thing he'd learned was how even the little things change, how it's not all zeppelins and Cybermen, how the big things are easier to take than the little ones.

"How's Jake?" she says.

"Still sort of gutted, but he only shows it when nobody else is around." Mickey watches the cheese ooze from his latest slice. "He really loved that- that other me. It's been weird for both of us."

"Understatement of the year." She grins, just a little, and he laughs and looks down at the pizza sauce dripping onto his sleeve. Colour's off, too, a bit orangey.

"Hang on," she says, and swipes at his arm with her napkin. "There. That's got it."

They fall into one of the old silences, knowing the things they can't say aloud, and he sees her hand reach for his, just once, out of the corner of his eye, but she draws it back before he can return the touch.

"You can't wait forever," he says, and her face colours and she looks away.

"You did," she says, almost too soft to hear, and this time her hand does make it into his. "Sometimes, Mickey, I don't know if he even deserves it."

He sees the ghost of her smile, confident and honest, and squeezes her hand. "It's your life, Rose. You try what you can, and you live each day. It might not work out every time, but at least you can fall back on the trying."

Her voice is small when she speaks again, and there's fear in it, and just a bit of awe. "There's no such thing as an ordinary life, is there?"

And then she leans against him, and he puts an arm around her, and they sit in the absence of all the old, familiar places for a very long time.

*~*~*

"That's all it is," Mickey says, grinning into his pint at the celebrations all around, at the TV set showing strange planets hovering on the horizon, at the the blue sky out the window. "You come back home, then, and you figure out that nothing's waiting for you anymore, and you make a new home."

"'Tis better to have loved and lost," mumbles Jack, resting his forehead on the bar.

Martha rolls her eyes and elbows him in the ribs. "He's not half as drunk as he's making out to be. He's just playing for pity. It's annoying."

Jack points a finger in her general direction. "All lies. I helped save the world." He pauses. "Again. I think I'm licensed to get a bit hammered. Mickey's on my side."

With a groan, Mickey raises his hands, though he can't quite shake the smile on his face. "I'm not on anyone's side. Free agent, that's me."

"And how's that feel?" Martha grins at him, but he can see the slight hesitation in her smile; she's been here before, isn't sure how he'll take it, what he'll do with what he's got.

"Same as ever," he says. "Everything's out there waiting for me. Anything and everything."

"There's home," slurs Jack, "and then there's _home_, you know?"

"If you weren't immortal I'd be cutting you off about now," Martha says, but her eyes are shining. "We might see them again, you know. Any of them. All of them."

"That's half the fun," says Jack. "Never know when you're gonna meet-" He hiccups, while Martha perfects her long-suffering sigh. "-meet an old friend, or a new lover."

"Come on, then," says Martha, and raises her glass. "To the future."

"No," says Mickey, and raises his glass still higher. "I've had enough of the future and the past and all. To home."

"Yeah," she says, and laughs. "Yeah, you're right. To home."

That night, uncomfortable with the brightness of headlights and the silence where there should be the whirr of airborne engines, he rolls off the makeshift bed in Martha's sitting room and pads to the window.

Only a few pinpricks of light have made it past the overwhelming glare of the city, and he smiles up at them, all the same old stars, the same old planets, the same old airplanes and spaceships. They wink and shimmer in the shifting light.

"Even when you can't see them," he says, softly, "they're still there."

He closes the drapes and moves back into the darkened room and, for the first time, he doesn't need to dream.


End file.
